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Sunday, May 13, 2012

4 Mothers in Literature for Mother's Day

I'm currently devouring Cutting for Stone, and the mother of the twins who I presume will become the main characters has just died. Mothers in fiction are much like Disney moms- the good ones are all dead, and the few that aren't evil are plot devices.

So in honor of Mother's Day, here's the four best, living mothers I could think of from books I've read:

Mrs. Murray from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle- I haven't read this book in years, but I remember thinking Mrs. Murray seemed pretty cool. Any mother who cooks dinner over a bunsen burner gets an A from me;

Becky Thatcher from Becky by Lenore Hart- one of my favorite books with a female protagonist because it mixes historical fiction and literary revisionism, Hart imagines the life of Tom Sawyer's one-time girlfriend;

Hester Prynn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne- speaking of getting an A (puns!), I think Hester Prynne deserves a lot more credit for patience and compassion with Pearl;

2 comments:

Mrs Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility is all right, isn't she? The Dowager Duchess in the Lord Peter Wimsey novels is lovely, and a great mother-in-law too. I'm sure there are plenty more, I just can't think of them at the moment... I've just read the first of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books and the mother in that is lovely too - always believing in her sons even when nobody else does.